Satellite microphones are commonly used in teleconferencing hardware, such as speakerphones and conference room audio equipment, and are connected to a base station of the speakerphone or multiplexer/controller of conference room audio equipment. Whereas microphones provided in the base station of the teleconferencing hardware may be far from some participants in a call, satellite, or remote, microphones improve the voice quality of a call by placing the microphone closer to a user, thereby yielding a better signal to noise ratio.
Satellite microphones might provide a mute function via a discrete button on the surface of the wired satellite microphone, which allows a participant to turn off his or her microphone at will (or even all of the microphones connected to the teleconferencing hardware), and remove his or her audio stream from the call. However, the mute button is often small or hard to locate, particularly for a user unfamiliar with a given wired satellite microphone. Furthermore, while wired satellite microphones may offer a mute function, they do not offer any physical way to control the volume level of a speaker(s).